[Sergeant]

Myself and a few Others Started My Tractor forum dot com in 2005 which we kept Going By donations Until It was sold In 2010 to Vertical Scope Inc. (still a touchy subject for some of us founding members). But that's another story.

Since Vertical Scope Inc. took over, if You're a standard Member(non Paying) You do get advertisements That Pop Up,

They do charge a decent Fee to the site supporters that want links to their products, like the 6 shown at the top of the page. But some of the site supporters do get a Lot for that fee, such as their Own forum to moderate within MTF itself.

Now Vertical Scope Inc. is in business to Make Money and Pay its employees. Who in turn assists us Moderators which, for the most part, make the rules and run the forum day to day.

Vertical Scope Inc. owns the following Lawn & Garden tractor forums:
Just to name a few, as follows:

My Tractor Forum
Green Tractor Talk
Weekend Freedom Machines

Vertical Scope owns about 1,200 forums currently. They started Basically Like the company that has hosted this forum for Ron which I don't think they do much of anymore. Furthermore, they prefer to own and run the forums instead of Just hosting them for a forum owner.

Now for the Yearly fee standard Members. If You Make a donation and become a Premium Member, You don't get advertisements when logged in, and you get a Much Larger Private Message folder. Now You can also be a site support advertiser, with an additional fee to sell your product.

But for the Most Part I see Non VS forums charging between $20 to $25 a Year for site Membership,(simple tractor and Red Square) and it seems enough to keep the forums afloat to pay their bills to Hosting companies. Basically, if 20 Members pay a yearly fee of $25 that covers the Fees a hosting company requires yearly at least the one that runs this forum or 25 Members pay $20, and then the extra beyond that helps with the Purchase of new software to help with Making a forum even more user-friendly and to provide better security software etc.